Infant

The mother of an infant, along with a man, have been arrested in connection with the death of the child in Inglewood. Authorities arrived in the 500 block of North Marlborough Avenue at about 6:47 a.m. Wednesday after reports of an infant who was not breathing, said Inglewood Police Sgt. Francisco Ruiz. The infant, whose age was not released, was taken to a hospital, but died there, Ruiz said. An investigation, he said, "revealed possible child abuse" at the home and the 23-year-old mother and a 28-year-old man were taken into custody.

As a woman's body mass index rises before she is pregnant or early in pregnancy, there is an increased risk of fetal death, stillbirth or infant death, and severely obese women have the highest risk, researchers said Tuesday. But even “modest” increases in BMI were associated with increased risks, the scientists wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The scientists recommend that women and their caregivers take the findings into account as they consider getting pregnant.

Amid at least 95 reports of babies falling out of the popular Bumbo baby seats -- including 19 who suffered skull fractures -- the company said it is recalling nearly 4 million seats in the U.S. But instead of returning the seats to stores, South Africa-based Bumbo International Trust said customers should order a free repair kit that includes a restraint belt as well as a warning sticker cautioning against placing the seat on raised surfaces....

A 24-year-old man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for fatally beating his Azusa girlfriend's infant son. Stephen Douglas Hoffman was convicted in February of second-degree murder and assault on a child causing death after Los Angeles County coroner's officials determined the 16-month-old boy had been hit as many as 21 times in the head. At the trial, which lasted about three weeks, witnesses testified that it was one of the worst injuries they had seen on a child.

My busy morning was interrupted by a detective who called to tell me of yet another infant abandonment just hours after birth. He asked several questions, struggling to understand the case that he was investigating. He wanted a possible profile or description of a woman who abandons. He described, too graphically, the fresh-born infant, blood not yet coagulated, left in a dumpster, with a rope around the neck--strangled. He said he'd worked homicide many years and had seen everything, but this was the worst.

A woman has been charged in the 2013 death of her 10-month-old daughter, Los Angeles County prosecutors said Thursday. Charissa Ranee Bailey, 28, remained jailed on a murder charge in lieu of $1 million bail. The incident occurred April 24, 2013, when homicide detectives were called to a Long Beach motel after Brihanna Adkins was pronounced dead at a hospital. Authorities said Brihanna had stopped breathing at the motel in the 600 block of West Pacific Coast Highway before she was taken to the hospital.

The Los Angeles County coroner Tuesday released the name of the 8-month-old infant who drowned in San Gabriel Valley after authorities say his mother left him unattended in a bathtub with his young siblings. Jedidiah Turner died Friday morning in the 1500 block of Pass and Covina Road in Valinda, according to authorities. The autopsy was still pending Tuesday, according to Lt. Larry Dietz. The infant's mother, who has not been identified, was bathing Jedidiah along with his 1-year-old sister and 2-year-old brother at around 8:50 a.m. Friday when she stepped away for 10 to 15 minutes.

A Dayton woman convicted of murdering her infant daughter by microwaving her was spared the death penalty by a jury that couldn't reach a unanimous decision. Now, the maximum sentence that China Arnold can receive is now life in prison without parole. She was convicted of the 2005 killing of month-old Paris Talley. Sentencing is set for Monday.

Police officials who responded to a frantic 17-year-old mother's call for help in Fairfield, Calif., described a gruesome scene as they were led to her month-old infant son. A chunk of his nose had been bitten off and he was bleeding profusely. “It was a very unusual case. It's disturbing and gruesome,” Troy Oviatt, of the Fairfield Police Major Crimes Unit, told Fox40 . The infant was taken to Oakland Children's Hospital, where doctors determined that he also suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage. Doctors said about a third of the infant's nose had been severed.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals this week set aside the 37 1/2-year prison sentence of a former Cal State East Bay professor who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a woman's infant daughter multiple times. In setting aside the prison term for Kenneth Kyle, along with his guilty plea, the appellate court on Wednesday ruled that the sentencing judge had interfered with plea negotiations by promising a life term if the case went to trial and he was convicted. In stating that he would give Kyle a life sentence, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of San Francisco became involved in the plea negotiations, which violated federal regulations, the federal appeals court ruled.

A woman has been charged in the 2013 death of her 10-month-old daughter, Los Angeles County prosecutors said Thursday. Charissa Ranee Bailey, 28, remained jailed on a murder charge in lieu of $1 million bail. The incident occurred April 24, 2013, when homicide detectives were called to a Long Beach motel after Brihanna Adkins was pronounced dead at a hospital. Authorities said Brihanna had stopped breathing at the motel in the 600 block of West Pacific Coast Highway before she was taken to the hospital.

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to pay a $500,000 settlement in a case centering on the 2011 death of a 2-month-old boy who was killed when a driver overran the curb and plowed into pedestrians during the Downtown Art Walk. In a 2012 legal complaint, Jimmy and Natasha Vasquez, of Montebello, alleged that their son's death was the result of the city's “failure to properly design and create safe walking areas for pedestrians and/or place sufficient barriers and protections for pedestrians from vehicles” at the downtown event.

Police officials who responded to a frantic 17-year-old mother's call for help in Fairfield, Calif., described a gruesome scene as they were led to her month-old infant son. A chunk of his nose had been bitten off and he was bleeding profusely. “It was a very unusual case. It's disturbing and gruesome,” Troy Oviatt, of the Fairfield Police Major Crimes Unit, told Fox40 . The infant was taken to Oakland Children's Hospital, where doctors determined that he also suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage. Doctors said about a third of the infant's nose had been severed.

Police in Northern California arrested an 18-year-old Fairfield man Thursday who they say bit off his infant son's nose after becoming frustrated with the baby's incessant crying. The month-old boy was taken to Oakland Children's Hospital, where doctors determined that the baby also suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhage. The child is in stable condition, said Troy Oviatt of the Fairfield Major Crimes Unit. Police were called to child's home early Thursday by the baby's hysterical 17-year-old mother, who reported that the baby was bleeding from the nose, Oviatt said. Doctors said about a third of the infant's nose had been severed.

A teenage girl in Madera, Calif., pleaded not guilty Thursday to killing her newborn. Investigators discovered the infant wrapped in a plastic bag under a bathroom sink. Authorities told the Fresno Bee that Gloria Mendoza Santos, 17, had arrived in Madera from Oaxaca, Mexico, just three days before going to a hospital last week. Doctors there discovered she was suffering from postpartum bleeding, but at the time she reportedly denied giving birth. Investigators searched her home and discovered the infant's body stuffed beneath a bathroom sink.

Confirmed influenza deaths of Californians under the age of 65 reached 202 this week, state health officials said, with 26 deaths confirmed in Los Angeles County. Speaking with reporters Friday, California Department of Public Health communicable disease control chief Dr. James Watt also reported the death of an infant in Riverside County from pertussis. The child's death marks the first whooping cough fatality since 2010, the last time the disease peaked in the state. That year, more than 9,100 cases of pertussis were reported in California, with 10 deaths.

A woman jailed in Benton after four of her infant daughter's toes were gnawed off says the family's pet ferret did it, not their pit bull pup as her husband had said. "The way the bite marks were on her foot, the ferret being out of its cage, I knew it wasn't the dog," Mary Hansche, 22, told KTBS-TV. Authorities said it did not matter which pet was at fault and jailed Hansche and her husband Christopher, 26, in lieu of $50,000 bond each, on charges of child desertion and criminal negligence.

A jury in Galveston sentenced a man to 25 years in prison for severely burning his infant daughter in a microwave. The jury had convicted Joshua Mauldin on Tuesday of felony injury to a child, rejecting his claim that he was insane at the time.

A 3-month-old boy was removed from a Littlerock home and a man arrested on federal charges that he produced child pornography with the infant and emailed it to an undercover detective in England, officials said Tuesday. Robert Dale Schrader, 33, of Littlerock, was taken into federal custody Monday on two counts of producing child pornography after an investigation by the Long Beach-based, multiagency Child Exploitation Investigations Group. “This is one of the youngest, if not the youngest, child pornography victims ever identified in the Los Angeles area,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Immigration & Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, which played a lead role in the investigation.

A man who spent more than three years in a Sacramento jail on charges that he killed his 4-month-old son was released Thursday after prosecutors told a judge they could no longer prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had inflicted the injuries. Everett Bobbylee Quinn, now 24, was arrested about a year after his infant son died in a hospital July 29, 2007. Quinn and his girlfriend called 911 on May 19, 2007, to report that the baby had become unresponsive after vomiting blood.